China's leading social networking services website Xiaonei.com has announced plans to open its Internet payment system application program interface, making it the first SNS website that has opened its payment system to third parties.

The opening of Xiaonei.com's payment system to open platforms aims to help more third party companies, to help them gain profits and get through the coming financial crisis. Xiaonei.com has reportedly allowed all qualified application developers enter its payment system from October 17, 2008. At present, several application developing teams have joined the payment system and the engineers of the website are helping them to get used to this system and guide them to design proper charging models.

Xu Chaojun, vice president of China InterActive Corp, which is a major stakeholder in Xiaonei.com, says that Xiaonei.com's payment system has established cooperations with many Chinese banks and third-party payment software developers. With this platform, the entire payment process can be easily handled and the only thing for the application developers to think about is how to get the money into their users' pockets.